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Supernerd

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 19, 2012
57
0
Yo momma's house
I have a 2009 iMac with Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb DDR3, and GeForce GT 120. It's not great by today's standards. I was wondering if Mavericks decreases performance in any way, and if it will still run as fast as Snow Leopard.
 
I have 2010 i5 MacBook Pro, I installed first GM and I can tell I didn't see any
speed differences between ML and mavericks. But battery life is definitely much better.
 
I have a baseline 13" mid 2010 MBP. Mavericks runs very smoothly, have not really had a chance to check whether the battery life is longer.
 
I have a baseline 13" mid 2010 MBP. Mavericks runs very smoothly, have not really had a chance to check whether the battery life is longer.

We've got the same computer probably. Would love to know how it runs. I'm in the process of getting it right now :D
 
We've got the same computer probably. Would love to know how it runs. I'm in the process of getting it right now :D

To find out which Model you have do the following:

1. Press the :apple: logo on the top right of the screen.
2. Select About This Mac
3. Select More Info....
4. You will get a screen which says you have a iMac/ MBP ... and just below will say your exact model
 
I have a 2009 iMac with Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb DDR3, and GeForce GT 120. It's not great by today's standards. I was wondering if Mavericks decreases performance in any way, and if it will still run as fast as Snow Leopard.

Not speaking from direct experience here, but I would think if you upped your RAM to 8GB, you should be golden. But again, this is just a guess.
 
I'm running it on my 2009 MBP with 2.66 GHz C2D and 8GB RAM, and its a dream! My MBP was already pretty darn fast since I take good care of it, in fact its usually snappier than my 2011 i5 iMac funnily enough.

Since installing Mavericks, animations seem a lot more smooth and apps are more quick to respond. I have yet to see a single beach ball and I've been using it for around 3 hours. I've run a ton of apps and seen almost no slow down at all. It tends to run cooler than ML too, with general CPU temp below 50 degrees when using finder, safari, mail and a few other apps.

Everything just seems more smooth and snappy, and its all very fast. I literally have no reason to upgrade my laptop any time soon.
 
2.26 ghz MBP 13

i have 13 2.26 2009 mbp that i have installed mavericks on. it feels very sluggish and sometimes just hangs and freezes in certain cases.

I'm looking into getting an SSD for but just wondering if its worth doing the upgrade if it'll still act sluggish.

I've also did the upgrade jump from snow leopard to lion and did not do a fresh install, would that be a factor as well?
 
It wont feel sluggish. SSD is the single best upgrade you can buy for your computer. Not even more RAM makes such a world of difference. 2009 computer is more than fine for everyday use.
 
Running well on my late 2007 iMac with 4GB ram ... I'm not sure if it is slower than when it had SL, I'm used to SSD drives now and so the iMac is of course slower to load things than my new MBPr, but it isn't badly slow.
 
MBP 17" 2007 model

Core 2 Duo
3 Gb RAM
160 Gb 5400 rpm drive
nVidia GeForce 8600M GT 256 Mb RAM

It runs, but it runs slower than Mountain Lion. Mainly a lot of hard-disk activity. The active program runs smooth, but switching between or starting programs may be somewhat slower or much slower, depending on what I have running in the background.

All of this is still workable though.
 
Parsec, your 17" 2007 MBP would do very well with an SSD upgrade. An SSD gave my 15" 2007 MBP a new lease of life.

Replying to the OP: Mavericks has run great for me on my 2007 MBP (with SSD ;)
 
I installed 10.9 on a 2009 Mac Pro (2.66GHz quad/24GB RAM/512GB SSD) and it basically flies. I thought it a bit faster than 10.85. I also installed on a late 2007 iMac (2.8GHz Coreduo/4GB RAM) and it's pretty pokey. I should have left it on Lion as it performed well but I wanted everything to sync smoothing between my 3 Macs. I'm guessing it needs more RAM and SSD but it ain't worth upgrading this late in its life.
 
I would just back everything up (the entire drive) on an external, then do the install clean. If it doesn't please you, then just restore from the backup. Nothing lost but a little time.
 
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